Black Sea Trivia
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50 free Black Sea trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Black Sea is a near-landlocked sea whose deep water has been dead for thousands of years, and this quiz covers it from the geology up. It starts with the map: the six countries on its shore, the 24 in its drainage basin, the Danube, Dnieper and Dniester, the Bosporus and Kerch straits, the Sea of Azov and the peculiar two-way current under Istanbul. Then it goes below the surface, to the anoxic layer that preserves ancient shipwrecks, the surface salinity, and the deluge hypothesis that some tie to the story of Noah. The second half is history and coastlines: the Hittite Sea of Zalpa, the Greek Inhospitable Sea, Colchis and the Golden Fleece, the Kingdom of Pontus, Ovid's exile at Tomis, the Ottoman capture of Trebizond, the founding of Odesa and Sevastopol, the oldest gold in the world at Varna, the Yalta Conference, the 1936 Montreux Convention, the Winter Olympics at Sochi, the Crimean Bridge, Snake Island and the sinking of the Moskva. There are also beluga sturgeon, anchovies and monk seals. Easy questions suit anyone who can find the sea on a map; the expert tier is for geographers and historians of the region. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the sea, its straits, ports and history, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which landlocked country swapped land with Ukraine for a route to the Black Sea?
Moldova
Moldova: it gave up a stretch of road for a strip of riverbank only a few hundred metres long, then built a port there that seagoing ships can reach.
Q 02Which strait, lined by Istanbul, connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara?
The Bosporus
The Bosporus: it cuts Istanbul in two, so ferries, three bridges and a rail tunnel carry commuters between Europe and Asia every day.
Q 03The strait through Istanbul holds which distinction among the world's straits?
The narrowest for shipping
The narrowest for shipping: well under a kilometre across at its tightest, it forces tankers through sharp turns in strong currents, which makes it a dangerous and difficult passage for big ships.
Q 04Istanbul's strait has a name meaning ox ford, traditionally tied to which mythical woman turned into a cow?
Io
Io: loved by Zeus and turned into a white heifer, she was driven across the world by a gadfly Hera sent, swimming this strait on the way.
Q 05The Kerch Strait links the Black Sea to which smaller sea?
The Sea of Azov
The Sea of Azov: at most 14 metres deep, it is the world's shallowest sea, and river silt has left parts of its Taganrog Gulf barely a metre deep.
Q 06Tradition blames ships of which Italian republic, fleeing its Black Sea colony of Caffa, for bringing the Black Death to Europe?
Genoa
Genoa: an Italian notary wrote that Mongols besieging Caffa hurled plague-dead bodies over its walls and that fleeing ships carried the disease west, though historians now doubt it reached Europe by that route alone.
Q 07The Black Sea's deep water, over 2 km down at its deepest, is laced with which toxic gas?
Hydrogen sulfide
Hydrogen sulfide: below the top hundred metres or so there is no oxygen at all, leaving a dark dead zone where only specially adapted bacteria can live.
Q 08Greek myth chained which Titan to a peak in the Caucasus, above the Black Sea's eastern shore?
Prometheus
Prometheus: in the usual telling Zeus bound him there for giving fire to humans and sent an eagle to eat his liver, which grew back to be eaten again.
Q 09A 2,400-year-old Greek ship found intact in the Black Sea resembles one on a vase carrying which hero?
Odysseus
Odysseus: the British Museum's Siren Vase shows him tied to the mast, and the real ship kept its own mast, rudders and rowing benches because no oxygen reaches it two kilometres down.
Q 10Which philosopher, said to have hunted by lantern in daylight for an honest man, was born at Sinope on the Black Sea?
Diogenes
Diogenes: tradition has him driven from Sinope in a scandal over debased coins, and he made 'deface the currency' his mission, mocking every convention.
Q 11Beneath the surface current carrying Black Sea water out through Istanbul's strait, what flows the other way?
Saltier, heavier seawater
Saltier, heavier seawater: it creeps in along the bottom and sinks, so the sea stays layered, with a surface only about half as salty as the ocean floating on deep water that never mixes.
Q 12Which is the principal river feeding the Black Sea, along with the Dnieper and Dniester?
The Danube
The Danube: it rises in Germany's Black Forest and drains parts of 19 countries, the most international river basin in the world, so rain falling in the Black Forest ends up in the Black Sea.
Q 13The delta where the Black Sea's biggest river ends, a World Heritage wetland, lies mostly in which country?
Q 21Which Black Sea port city was founded as the Greek colony Tomis?
Constanta
Constanta: under Ottoman rule it shrank to a village of a few thousand people, and only after it changed hands in 1878 did it grow into its country's main seaport.
Q 22The world's oldest gold treasure, dated 4600-4200 BC, was found in a necropolis at which Bulgarian city?
Varna
Varna: in 1972 a young excavator driver digging a trench for electric cables fished a gold bracelet out of his bucket, and archaeologists went on to open about 300 graves.
Q 23Trebizond, which held out against the Ottomans until 1461, was a breakaway remnant of which empire?
Byzantine
Byzantine: a branch of the empire's old ruling family set up in Trebizond in 1204, as crusaders closed in on Constantinople, and their little state outlasted the capital's fall to the Ottomans by eight years.
Romania
Romania: a small share spills into Ukraine, and UNESCO protects the maze of reed beds and lakes because more than 300 kinds of birds use it.
Q 14A 1997 theory says the Black Sea was what before the Mediterranean burst into it?
A freshwater lake
A freshwater lake: the geologists behind the theory pictured the sea swamping it and its settlements and inspiring the story of Noah's flood, though later studies suggest the water rose far more gently.
Q 15Greek myth placed Themiscyra, the capital of which legendary people, on the Black Sea's southern shore?
The Amazons
The Amazons: Heracles's ninth labour was to fetch the belt of their queen Hippolyte, and graves of armed women found on the steppes around the Black Sea suggest the legend had real models.
Q 16To Greek ears the Black Sea's early name Pontos Axeinos, later softened to Euxeinos, meant what?
Inhospitable sea
Inhospitable sea: Greeks probably borrowed a Persian word for dark and heard it as their own word for unfriendly, then flipped it to Euxeinos, hospitable, once their colonies lined the shore.
Q 17One scholarly theory says the Black Sea was named under an old colour code in which black stood for which direction?
North
North: in that scheme red meant south and white west, so the Black Sea was simply the northern sea and the Red Sea the southern one, though other scholars dispute the idea.
Q 18Colchis, where the Argonauts sailed, is in which modern country?
Georgia
Georgia: to the Greeks Colchis was a land of fabulous wealth and sorcery, and real colonists from Miletus later settled its coast to trade for gold, timber and linen.
Q 19Under which king, who fought three wars against Rome, did the Kingdom of Pontus reach its greatest extent?
Mithridates VI
Mithridates VI: fearing assassins, he is said to have taken small doses of poison for years to build immunity, and so, the story goes, failed when he tried to poison himself in final defeat.
Q 20Which Roman poet was exiled by Augustus to Tomis on the Black Sea, where he spent his last years?
Ovid
Ovid: he blamed 'a poem and a mistake' without ever saying what the mistake was, and years of pleading in verse moved neither Augustus nor his heir Tiberius to let him come home.
Q 24Odesa was founded in 1794 by decree of which Russian ruler?
Catherine II
Catherine II: her statue in the city has come down twice, removed by the Bolsheviks in 1920 and again in December 2022, after residents voted during Russia's invasion to take it away.
Q 25Which famous title did the French aristocrat who governed Odesa from 1803 to 1814 bear?
Duc de Richelieu
Duc de Richelieu: after eleven years building up the city he went home to serve twice as France's prime minister, and talked the Allied armies occupying the country into leaving.
Q 26The 1905 workers' uprising in Odesa was famously supported by the crew of which Russian battleship?
Potemkin
Potemkin: Eisenstein's 1925 film Battleship Potemkin made the city's great staircase famous with a massacre scene that never happened there, though troops did shoot civilians elsewhere in town.
Q 27Turkey's Black Sea coast is the world's biggest source of which nut?
Hazelnuts
Hazelnuts: Turkey grows more than half the world's crop, mostly along that coast, where the harvest comes in each August, and Ferrero is a leading buyer, so much of the world's Nutella starts there.
Q 28Which garment is named after a Black Sea port where British troops froze in the 1850s?
Balaclava
Balaclava: the name, first recorded decades later, is thought to recall British troops shivering through a winter at the port of Balaklava, and the cardigan and raglan honour two of their generals.
Q 29The 1854-55 siege of Sevastopol was the central struggle of which war?
The Crimean War
The Crimean War: a young Leo Tolstoy served as an artillery officer inside the besieged city and turned what he saw into his Sevastopol Sketches.
Q 30The February 1945 Roosevelt–Churchill–Stalin conference was held near which Black Sea resort?
Yalta
Yalta: there Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan once Germany was beaten, and in return Roosevelt and Churchill promised the Soviets a sphere of influence in Manchuria.